Jazz pianist and composer Marta Sanchez was born in Madrid and now resides in Brooklyn. She presents eleven originals on her fifth recording, Perpetual Void (Intakt, 2024). Usually Sanchez performs and records with a quintet featuring two saxophonists. Here, in her first trio outing, she is joined by bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Savannah Harris. The leaner lineup works well, as it allows Sanchez abundant room to solo and, moreover, to express elements of the emotional journey that transpired during the time she composed the works on Perpetual Void. She had lost her mother and subsequently coped with frequent insomnia and anxiety.
The tracks are titled to reflect these challenges. “I Don’t Wanna Live the Wrong Life and Then Die,” which opens the album, is uptempo and nervous-sounding, Sanchez and Tordini run through presto melodic lines while Harris lets rip on both crash symbols. This is followed abruptly by “3:30 AM,” which once again presses the tempo and uses crunching half steps and abundant syncopation to channel an angst-filled bout with insomnia.
“Prelude to Grief” is a solo by Sanchez with the yearning bird calls of early morning set against wide-ranging arpeggiations and biting dissonant attacks. It is followed by “The Absence of People You Long For,” a mid-tempo ballad with an offset duet between piano and bass and subtle percussion effects. “Perpetual Void” has a chromatic melody overlaid with Latin rhythms. The second time through, a countermelody in the bass is juxtaposed against it. Sanchez’s solo is the most overt use of Spanish and Latin American materials, and it exudes a sense of exuberance. Tordini accompanies with bits of the countermelody interwoven with a walking line. Harris’s drumming is virtuosic, following the melody and adding ample fills.
“The End of That Period” allows for a momentary cessation of the previous intensity, with a major key melody split between piano and bass and economical drumming. On “Prelude to a Heartbreak,” Sanchez again plays solo, building arpeggios in both hands into faster and faster gestures. The piece’s coda is a slow exploration of tender harmonies and tuneful feints. “The Love Unable to Forgive” spotlights Tordini, who plays ostinatos and a bass tune that guides the proceedings. After Sanchez contributes a mercurial solo, she rejoins Tordini on the ostinato passages, dovetailing in counterpoint with the bassist. “Black Cyclone” has an intense opener, with stabbing fortissimo jabs, followed by a swinging melody and zesty harmonic changes.
Eventually the album announces a turn. With “This is the Last One About You,” a blues-inflected tune and driving tempo are bounteous terrain for fleet soloing from all three members of the trio. The final track, “29B,” is a fiery climax. After Sanchez’s solo, Tordini shares a slower one of his own, building to a final section that adds the other players and speeds back up to the original tempo, ending abruptly.
One hopes that Perpetual Void proves to be cathartic for Sanchez. Her lived experiences are exemplified in this moving and musically superlative set of compositions: recommended.
Vision Fest 2024 – William Parker Receives a Lifetime of Achievement Award
On June 18th, luminary bassist, bandleader, poet, and composer William Parker will receive a Lifetime of Achievement Award at Vision Fest 2024. The Brooklyn series for ecstatic jazz and improvised music has often featured Parker in a variety of ensemble configurations and in memorable solo performances.
He will be celebrated on Tuesday, June 18th, with a plethora of events (below) and performances that will also be livestreamed (tickets).
There is more to celebrate. On Friday, June 21st, AUM Fidelity is releasing two recordings featuring Parker.
William Parker and Ellen Christi – Cereal Music (AUM Fidelity)
This is William Parker’s first spoken word album. Themes that he has long addressed in writing – racial justice, spirituality, peace, and healing – are explored in the eloquent selections shared here. Parker also plays flutes and bass. His collaborator, vocalist and sound artist Ellen Christi creates an elegant sound design for the recording and contributes her rich, sonorous voice as well. Birdsong features alongside conventional instruments and subtle electronic drones. Parker’s word-play contains fantastical imagery grounded in gritty experiences from the urban landscape. His declamation drifts easily, occasionally punctuating a particular concept like an arrival point in an improvisation.
Heart Trio – William Parker, Cooper-Moore, Hamid Drake – Heart Music (AUM Fidelity)
William Parker is joined by two long-time collaborators – Cooper-Moore and Hamid Drake – in a new ensemble called Heart Trio. On their debut recording Heart Music, the musicians play a number of instruments, many Non-Western in background. Parker plays doson ngoni, shakuhachi, bass dudek, Serbian flute in F#, and Ney flute; Cooper-Moore plays ashimba and hoe-handle harp; Hamid Drake performs on frame drum and drum kit. The music they create simultaneously celebrates and transcends the traditions from which these instruments emanate. It combines polyrhythms identified with various cultures as well as passages, especially those featuring drum kit, that are palpably influenced by jazz. In spite of all of these elements, the trio’s interactions are seamless.
The theme of Heart Music is sound healing. Theraputic use of music is a practice that has its own academic discipline. One can also look to Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening practice for another way to approach healing with sound. Heart Trio’s mission to heal takes on a different guise. Their music accesses the shamanic, the power of dance as ritual, and the jubilation of three lifelong companions finding a new way to interrelate.
JUNE 18, 2024 WILLIAM PARKER LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT
6:30 PM ROOTS AND RITUALS William Parker / Josh Abrams / Joe Morris / Mixashawn Rozie / Hamid Drake / Jackson Krall /Juma Sultan / Michael Wimberly
7:15 PM Trail Of Tears Excerpts, The Blue Sky” Vanished Horizon” Annemarie Sandy, Andrea Wolper, Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez / Mara Rosenbloom / James Brandon Lewis / Mixashawn Rozie / Isaiah Parker / Hamid Drake
8:30 PM Raining On The Moon William Parker / Rob Brown / Steve Swell / Eri Yamamoto / Leena Conquest / Hamid Drake 9:15 PM The Ancients Isaiah Collier / Dave Burrell / William Hooker / Miriam Parker / William Parker 10:00 PM William Parker & Huey’s Pocket Watch
Rob Brown, Aakash Mittal /Isaiah barr / Alfredo Colon / Dave Sewelson / Steve Swel / Colin Babcock / Taylor Ho Bynum / Diego Hernandez / Colson Jimenez / Hans Young Binter / Juan Pablo Carletti / Ellen Christi / Kyoko Kitamura / Patricia Nicholson / Art by William Parker
This year’s Long Play schedule is particularly dizzying. The annual festival presented by Bang on a Can in Brooklyn, now in its third year, seems to have crammed more events than ever into its three day festival, running May 3, 4 and 5. For instance, on Saturday, May 4 at 2 pm, you’ll have to choose between a new opera by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Weiser with libretto by Ben Kaplan, called The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (at American Opera Projects) AND Ensemble Klang imported from the Netherlands playing works by the Dutch composer Peter Adriaansz (who has set texts from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”) at BRIC Ballroom AND vocal sextet Ekmeles performing music by George Lewis, Hannah Kendall, and Georg Friedrich Haas (actually at 2:30, but I imagine you’d have to get to The Space at Irondale early for a seat). A choice as difficult as any I’ve had to make at Jazzfest in New Orleans (which incidently is also happening this weekend, albeit 1000+ miles from Brooklyn).
Fans of Balinese gamelan music are in luck. A rare confluence of events provides the opportunity to hear two different ensembles, both free, both in Brooklyn, on Saturday. At 3:30 at the BRIC Stoop, you can enjoy the Queens College Gamelan Yowana Sari, performing with the percussion ensemble Talujon, along with the composer / performer Dewa Ketut Alit. Alit has come halfway around the world from Indonesia to Brooklyn for the premiere of his new work commissioned by Long Play. And at 5 pm the ensemble Dharma Swara performs at the Brooklyn Museum. Note: The Dharma Swara performance is not part of Long Play – it is a Carnegie Hall Citywide presentation.
Once your head has gone to Indonesia, you may want to continue on an around-the-world trip at Long Play. On Sunday at 2 at the Bam Café, hear DoYeon Kim playing gayageum (a traditional Korean plucked zither with 12 strings) along with her quartet featuring some New York jazz and classical luminaries.
Stick around at Bam Café after Kim’s set for another musician with sounds of a far-flung continent: At 3 pm the master kora player Yacouba Sissoko from Mali is joined by percussionist Moussa Diabaté. Diabaté is an internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer, drummer and balafon player and together the two bring the sounds and culture of West Africa to us.
Come to think of it, when was the last time you heard music by Philip Glass played on accordion? Might as well settle in at Bam Café for the 4 pm show on Sunday, then, to hear a rare performance of the Polish virtuoso Iwo Jedynecki. Jedynecki has created some inventive arrangements of Glass’ piano etudes for button accordion.
The pinnacle of Long Play comes Sunday evening at 8 at the BAM Opera House, when the Bang on a Can All-Stars along with a bunch of special guests perform a seminal work by Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians.
Ethan Iverson Curates Sono Fest; Han Chen’s Ligeti
Like many listeners, I first became acquainted with pianist Ethan Iverson via The Bad Plus recording These are the Vistas, which contained strong originals and a jaw-dropping rendition of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Several albums later, Iverson moved on from The Bad Plus to a variety of projects. His blog Do the Math outlines his work as an educator (at New England Conservatory) and a variety of interests that, unsurprisingly, focus on jazz, but also encompass twentieth and twenty-first century concert music. Starting next week, he brings his omnivorous musical instincts, and significant talents as a pianist, to bear, curating Sono Fest from June 6-23rd at Soapbox Gallery (636 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY 11238l).
Timo Andres by Michael Wilson.
Iverson’s newsletter has been a veritable feast of material previewing the festival (sign-up is free). He doesn’t just plug events, but gives detailed discussions of the programmed music and featured artists. Essays on Timo Andres, Miranda Cuckson, and Judith Berkson are all revealing.
Miranda Cuckson, violinJudith Berlson.
My favorite of the posts is about Ligeti, which discusses the piano etudes and includes a link to an interview by Benoît Delbecq with Ligeti included on DTM. Pianist Han Chen isn’t playing any Ligeti on Sono Fest, but his recital on June 17th looks tantalizing, with pieces by Berg, Corigliano, Adès, and Ravel.
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Han Chen’s new Naxos recording (8.574397) is a sterling document of the Ligeti Etudes. Iverson is voluble in praising it and I will add my own acclamations. The pieces themselves are one of the finest collections of the twentieth century, abundant in variety and virtuosic in demands. Ligeti’s early modern and postmodern concerns are updated by his late career interests in minimalism, Asian, and African music. There are a number of fine recordings of the etudes, but Han Chen’s is a welcome addition.
The pianist is tremendously fluent in the plethora of dynamics and articulations required by Ligeti. His execution of formidable polyrhythms and hairpin transitions are uniformly excellent. The first etude from Book 1, “Désorde,” in which the left hand has complex scalar patterns and the right spiky, syncopated progressions, is performed at a breakneck pace. “Galamb borong,” from Book 2, in which a gently percussive opening, evoking Balinese gamelan, gradually builds to thunderous chords, with a denouement at its close, is equally stirring. Directly following this is a rhythmically incisive performance of the polyrhythmic “Fém.” The diaphanous diatonicism of Book 3’s “White on White” is performed with superbly controlled delicacy. Its ebullient coda is a welcome surprise. Han Chen’s Ligeti CD shows that there is plenty of room to reinterpret the composer, particularly during his centennial year.
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Taka Kigawa
Sono Fest Schedule
Tickets are $25 in-person, or $15 for the live-stream, available at SoapboxGallery.org.
Tuesday, June 6 – Ethan Iverson and Miranda Cuckson
Wednesday, June 7 – Ethan Iverson and Chris Potter
Bang on a Can founders David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon (photo: George Etheredge)
In a culture in which we are constantly reinventing ourselves, any event can be the first annual anything. And so it is with Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival, whose inaugural edition was launched in Spring 2022.
The organizers clearly found Long Play to be a success: The 2023 edition is May 5, 6 and 7 with events spread over ten venues in downtown Brooklyn: Pioneer Works, Roulette, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Public Records, Littlefield, BRIC, Mark Morris Dance Center, The Center for Fiction, and Fort Greene Park. Over 50 performances are scheduled; most are accessed via a one-day or two-day pass ($89 and $150, respectively). Scores of performing artists include the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Philip Glass Ensemble performing the iconic Glassworks in its entirety for the first time; a reunion concert of Henry Threadgill’s Very Very Circus, the musical collective Harriet Tubman, Alarm Will Sound, JACK Quartet, Momenta Quartet, Sō Percussion, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars (of course!), and more. The complete list is here; tickets are here.
The composer David Lang, one of the three founders of Bang on a Can, told me, “Last year we had theorized this would work. We thought it would be good and we thought we would enjoy it – and we did it and it was a blast. Everyone in the organization got fired up by the fact that there was so much music and so many musicians and the audience was so varied and so interested.”
Lang along with the composers Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon launched Bang on a Can in New York City in 1987 with a 12-hour concert in a downtown art gallery. The organization became known for its annual marathon concerts in New York, and later expanded to include a performance group (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), a commissioning program, education programs and festivals at MASS MoCA in the Berkshires, and a record label (Cantaloupe).
Why after 30-plus years of successful marathon concerts did Bang on a Can decide to stray from its tried and true formula? Lang said, “After a while, we felt like we were inviting people on to the marathon for slots of 15 or 20 minutes that we wished were an hour or two hours. I remember thinking – this is at the last marathon – people would come in and they would go, “That was incredible. Why am I only wanting that for fifteen minutes?”
The aesthetic of the performers, programs and repertoire at Long Play doesn’t really differ from that of the marathons, said Lang. It’s still about performing artists who consider themselves innovators. “They say, ‘there’s a kind of traditional music that’s involved in my world and I’m not doing that.’ That’s always been the way we’ve judged people to come on to the marathon.” Lang continued, “What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will think that the world is full of creativity and wildness and inspiration and that the world is very large.”
“To me, one of the really exciting things about this festival is it shows you people who are taking lots of different attitudes equally seriously. They believe that their music has power. They believe that they’re part of a community which is coming together to do something important and that we as listeners are in fact an essential part of that community. And that music has a lot of powers to heal the problems of the world.”
As music lovers tromp around Brooklyn seeking aural pleasure and revelations from Long Play Festival events, some might need nourishment in a more literal sense. Barry Michael Okun has made it his lifetime passion and now fulltime job to curate a website and weekly newsletter pairing outstanding performing arts experiences with recommendations for culinary delights. I asked him to suggest a few spots from his curated Go Out! The List to re-fuel between performances. Here are his thoughts:
near Public Records: Mediterraneanish New American (or New Americanish Mediterranean) out of the big oven at Victor, 285 Nevins Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn.
near Pioneer Works: Piemontese-leaning Italian pastas and antis at Bar Mario, 365 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn.
near BAM/Mark Morris/BRIC: Exciting pizza at Oma Grassa, 753 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
near Roulette: Superb Palestinian at Al Badawi, 151 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
Some of the artists at the 2022 Long Play festival
Two years ago, I was editing a 2020 interview with the composer David Lang about the new multi-day festival that Bang on a Can planned for that spring, Long Play, when I realized the significance of the festival title. The year 2020 would be Bang on a Can’s 33rd anniversary. Long Play = LP = 33 rpm. Very clever! Although the festival was delayed for two years, it retains its name.
The inaugural Long Play festival takes place on April 29, April 30 and May 1, 2022 at a half-dozen venues in Brooklyn, including BAM, Roulette, Littlefield, the Center for Fiction, Mark Morris Dance Center, Public Records and the outdoor plaza at 300 Ashland. Over 60 performances are scheduled. Some are free, but most are accessed via a day pass ($95) or a three-day festival pass ($195). Over a hundred performers range from the Sun Ra Arkestra to jazz pianist Vijay Iyer to bagpiper Matthew Welsh (complete list is here).
Lang, along with the composers Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon launched Bang on a Can in New York City in 1987 with a 12-hour concert in a downtown art gallery. The organization became known for its annual marathon concerts in New York, and later expanded to include a performance group (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), a commissioning program, education programs and festivals at MASS MoCA in the Berkshires, a record label (Cantaloupe), and an on-going extensive online series created when live concerts were cancelled during the pandemic.
Looking back on our conversation on February 25, 2020, most of what Lang and I discussed is still relevant to the rescheduled Long Play Festival. Here is the interview, edited for length and clarity.
Gail Wein Successful marathons have been your signature event for Bang on a Can for 33 years. So what prompted the creation of this differently-formatted festival, Long Play?
David Lang
David Lang Over the last couple of marathons we have tried to expand our reach to different kinds of music and to other kinds of communities. After a while of doing that, we felt like we were inviting people on to the marathon for slots of 15 or 20 minutes that we wished were an hour or two hours. And so we got interested in a lot of other kinds of music and it just seemed like we weren’t spending enough time with them.
I remember thinking – this is at the last marathon – people would come in and they would go, “That was incredible. Why am I only wanting that for fifteen minutes?” What we’re hoping to do with this is to say, we’ve uncovered all these incredible connections between all these different kinds of music. And now we really want to let people go deeper into what those connections do and where they go.
Gail Wein Of course, it’s a much bigger scope. Three days, and a bunch of venues. And instead of the marathon’s free admission, this one is ticketed.
David Lang There’s still going to be a bunch of free things, including some outdoor events, because we really like the idea that we have a wide doorway, that lots of different kinds of people can come through with no barriers. But it’s also true that when you start working with so many hundreds of musicians and so many different kinds of venues, that it’s just not possible for us to fundraise to make the entire thing free anymore. So we came up with this plan that, for essentially the price of one ticket, you get a pass which allows you to see everything and then you’ll just be able to go in and out of performances and check out music from all these different communities.
Gail Wein How does the aesthetic of the performers and the programs and the repertoire differ from that of the marathons?
David Lang I don’t think it differs at all.
We’re still looking for people whose definition of what they do is: they wake up in the morning and tell themselves that they’re innovators. They wake up and they say, there’s a kind of traditional music that’s involved in my world and I’m not doing that. That’s always been the way we’ve judged people to come on to the marathon. We wanted to find people who were pushing their fields. The difference here is that we’re able to go deeper into other kinds of communities like jazz and rock music and indie pop and ambient and electronica and be able to invite more people who are pushing their boundaries.
Gail Wein I was thinking about the longevity of Bang on a Can as an institution. Institutions come and go, organizations come and go, various folks have mounted series, marathons, festivals. But not that many have lasted a third of a century. To what do you attribute Bang on a Can’s longevity?
David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, the founders of Bang on A Can (photo by Peter Serling)
David Lang I’m sure some of it is just dumb luck. But also we have a kind of hippie mentality about what it is we do, where we want everyone involved in the organization to be as excited and passionate about it as possible. If something comes up that we are not passionate about, we don’t do it. Some organizations, they just begin to think, well, we have a payroll to meet. We’ve got to do this, and this is what we did last year.
One of the things that we’re really proudest of about this festival and also about our sister festival that we started in summer, which is the Loud Weekend Festival at Mass Moca, is that we’re able to change and get excited about other kinds of things and then turn the organization so that it can take advantage of what we’re all really excited about. Everyone who works at Bang on a Can is a musician; we only hire people who are musicians. And so when we talk about these things in the office, we really are sharing ideas of the things that we are all getting excited about. And so when you do something like this, when you say this is a new direction that we’re going in, or this is the kind of music we want to include, or this is a new initiative for something we’d like to do, it’s something that energizes everybody. That’s one of the reasons why we can stay fresh, because everybody understands how committed we all are to the mission of the organization.
Gail Wein I’ve been thinking about this: New York City is already one big music festival every single day.
David Lang It is.
Gail Wein So why do you think New York and New Yorkers need this festival?
David Lang One of the beautiful things about this is the pass, quite honestly. In New York, there are always 500 concerts to see every single night. And you pay your money and you go see it and you stick it out, right? And then you say, I know I’m going to see this one, I don’t know that other kind of music, so I’m going to go see the one I know because I have to pay the money and I have to sit there for the concert.
At Long Play, we have all of this music within a few blocks of each other, all in walking distance, in Brooklyn, all the concerts are scheduled to go on simultaneously. What I’m really hoping will happen is that people with the pass will be encouraged to check out things that they wouldn’t necessarily check out because they have the right to go to that concert. So that’s our thought of how to replace the thing that we loved so much about the marathon, which is to put this kind of music next to each other, so that someone would come out of watching twelve hours of the music at the marathon and having a kind of cross section of a huge swath of interesting innovative things. What we’re hoping now will happen is that because I’ve already bought a pass, I’m going to check it out. And if I don’t like it, I can get up in 10 minutes and go check something else out. I’m not obligated to spend $50 for a concert of stuff I don’t know.
Gail Wein How did you choose and curate the artists and the programs and the venues as well?
David Lang We wanted to find places that were all in walking distance. And of course, that means that we started talking to everybody a year ago in order to get on their schedules. And then we just went to every single person who works in Bang on a Can and asked, what do you want to see? People just thought, what’s the widest, most varied, most exciting bunch of things from a bunch of different musical directions that we can come up with?
Gail Wein What do you hope audiences will come away with after experiencing the Long Play Festival?
David Lang What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will think that the world is full of all sorts of exciting things going on right now. And and that it’s full of creativity and wildness and inspiration and and that the world is very large. You know, I think sometimes when you go to a concert that’s neatly packaged and everything fits and everything makes sense. You go, this is a complete experience andI don’t need anything else. What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will come to this thing and they’ll go. That was unbelievable. And the world is full of all sorts of things that I have to continue to check out.
I asked David Lang which of the artists and programs were his favorite. A message he sent in an email newsletter earlier this month sums up his thoughts about the 2022 festival.
April 5, 2022
LONG PLAY really reminds me of those choose-your-own-adventure books – you get to make your own musical path through each day.
That is why I am going to plot my course through the weekend, very very carefully – I want to make sure I build my schedule around the concerts that I really have to see. Such as:
Stimmung – Karlheinz Stockhausen – It is hard to imagine that a European modernist classic from the 1960’s is in reality a meditation on everyone in the world having sex with each other, but that is what it is. Ekmeles sings at the Mark Morris Dance Center at 5pm on Friday, April 29.
Iva Casian-Lakos plays Joan La Barbara – Bang on a Can introduced these two to each other on one of our Pandemic Marathons last year, commissioning a new work from Joan for Iva’s fiery cello playing. The result was so electrifying that they have made it into a show, and I need to hear how it has grown. At the Center for Fiction at 2pm on Sunday.
Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey – Their album UNEASY came out last year on ECM and it has been on heavy rotation in my studio ever since. It’s tuneful and moody and thoughtful, and I really want to hear them play together, live. At Roulette on Saturday at 8pm.
Eddy Kwon – composer, singer, violinist – their music is so beautiful and flows so smoothly across so many boundaries that is hard for me to even describe it. The songs feel like the hit arias from the foundational music of a culture I have never experienced before. Magic. Sunday at 4pm at the Center for Fiction.
Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come – Coleman was a motivator for so much forward motion in music. This legendary album from 1959 was a big part of that, and it is still pushing musicians to move forward. I want to be there when six composers show us how with their world premieres. At BAM’s Opera House 7:30pm on Sunday, May 1.
And then I have to figure out how to run between all the other shows, trying to see as much as I can.
Nona Hendryx! Arvo Pärt! Sun Ra! Éliane Radigue! ZoëKeating! Galina Ustvolskaya! Pamela Z! JG Thirlwell! Soo-Yeon Lyuh! Craig Harris! The Brooklyn Youth Chorus! More! Much more!
Plus I will try to see my own show (Death Speaks) with Shara Nova on Sunday at Mark Morris, if I can figure out how to fit it in.
Whatever the schedule ends up looking like, I have a feeling you are going to see me there with circles under my eyes, as I run from show to show to show to show to show.
Barre Phillips
Zürcher Gallery
By Christian Carey
Sequenza 21
May 20, 2019
Barre Phillips
NEW YORK – ECM Records has released a number of great solo bass recordings. The label’s producer, Manfred Eicher, was himself a bassist, and he has invited a number of fellow low string players to record for ECM. Barre Phillips is a pathfinder in the genre, releasing one of the first solo bass recordings, Journal Violone, on Opus One in 1968. Eicher and he have been keen collaborators for many years, beginning in 1971 with a duo recording of Phillips with Dave Holland, Music from Two Basses, the first of its kind, which was followed by a number of solo and ensemble outings for ECM. In 2018, the imprint released what was announced as Phillips last solo CD, End to End, which he called the last entry in his “Journal Violone.”
It has been more than thirty years since Phillips last performed in New York. Originally from San Francisco and long a resident of France, much of the bassist’s career has been made playing in Europe. On Monday, May 20th, he appearedat the Zürcher Gallery, an art venue on Bleecker Street in lower Manhattan. The crowd was standing room only and contained a number of jazz and experimental music luminaries. They were attentive and enthusiastic throughout.
Phillips turns eighty-five in October. In his performance on Monday night, he appeared energetic and fit. He easily hoisted a sizeable double bass to his shoulder, and deftly moved it around to play its entirety: not just the strings. His playing and demeanor are vibrant, inquisitive, and often imbued with puckish humor.
The bassist gave a veritable masterclass of standard and extended playing techniques. The latter appear prolifically on End to End, among them high harmonics, different varieties of strumming such as plucking notes with both hands, a number of approaches to bowing, microtones, glissandos, and all manner of percussive playing. However, the CD intersperses these with a fair bit of cantabile playing. Less of that was on offer live. Instead, with a mischievous twinkle and disarming banter, Phillips went to work showing what it meant to “do your own thing” when, as he described it, career paths in more traditional jazz and classical music were denied him.
Each piece, most of them improvised but some selections fromEnd to End that had been crafted into compositions, centered on a different palette of techniques. At times Phillips played his instrument caressingly, seeming to coax delicate high notes and thrumming vibrations from the strings at a pianissimo dynamic. At others, he virtually attacked the instrument, scratching it from stem to stern with his bow. If a luthier were in attendance, they would have likely had a panic attack.
There was considerable variation in the harmonic vocabulary employed. Some of the music was in the ‘out’ post-tonal language of free jazz. Phillips also supplied an etude of octaves, another of open string drones, a third a chameleon-like shift to Eastern scales and gestures, and on “Inner Door, Pt. 4,” a plaintive modal jazz solo grounded in double-stopped fifths. Here, as elsewhere, Phillips displayed a penchant for executing a long, unerringly controlled decrescendo, bringing the music to a whispered close. Zürcher was an ideal location in which to hear these small details: an intimate space but one with good acoustics.
It is unfortunate that New Yorkers haven’t had more opportunities to hear Barre Phillips up close and personal. His performance was an unforgettable experience. Phillips joins Mat Maneri, Emilie Lesbros, and Hank Roberts for a performance on Saturday night at 8 PM at Brooklyn’s I-Beam. One more chance …
-Christian Carey
In recent years, saxophonist and composer Tim Berne has frequently collaborated with pianist Matt Mitchell, most notably in Snakeoil, a quartet in which the two are joined by clarinetist Oscar Noriega and percussionist Ches Smith. Thus, Mitchell approaches Berne’s music from a unique and intimate vantage point, one ideal for the first solo interpreter of Berne’s intricate compositions. On FØRAGE, the pianist incorporates Snakeoil tunes as well as other Berne works to craft an imaginative and exhilarating program.
“PÆNË” opens the recording with material from TheShell Game, Berne’s 2001 release for Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series, on which the saxophonist performed with keyboardist Crag Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey in a trio called Hard Cell. The original rendition of the excerpted composition, “Thin Ice,” opens with spacey synths playing a decidedly angular version of a chord progression in straight quarters. Taborn is joined by an altissimo register sax solo that then moves suddenly downward into a wide-ranging post-bop excursion; all of this is reinforced by Rainey’s questing and aggressively punctuated drumming. Mitchell’s version distills the essence of “Thin Ice,” interpreting its 6/8 section with an imaginative gloss on all three musicians’ approaches from the original recording. Thus, the synthesizer’s chords are put into the middle and upper register of the piano in less rangy spacing. Rainey’s drumming is imitated by syncopated soprano register verticals. What was Berne’s melody glides between these two formidable layers (plus additional comping and bass notes to boot), supplying a gradually revealed essay of considerable interest.
On “TRĀÇĘŚ,” Mitchell reinterprets “Traction,” material from The Sublime And., a 2003 live release by another Berne band called Science Friction, a quartet with guitarist Marc Ducret joining Berne, Taborn, and Rainey. The most relentless cut on the album, it features incendiary lines from Ducret in tandem with a fierce ostinato from Berne that eventually evolves into a mayhem of upper register howls and bristling leaps. It is remarkable how, sans the amplification employed by Ducret and Taborn, Mitchell is able to create such a sizzling version of “Traction.” The pianist’s approach leaves little from the original to the imagination, encompassing a plethora of polyrhythms and unabating riffs as well as pointed soloing of his own. Even though inherently it is repurposed for the solo medium, the intensity of the original crackles here, never more so than in the endless, forceful rearticulations of the coda. “RÄÅY” also interprets music from the Sublime And.: here the piece is “Van Gundy’s Retreat,” a tune that in the original version combines an ebullient romp with passages of mysterious sostenuto. Mitchell employs “Van Gundy’s Retreat” as the latter half of “RÄÅY:” It begins with “Lame 3,” an established Berne composition that is slated for reinterpretation on the next Snakeoil recording. While rhythmically intricate like most of Berne’s work, it demonstrates a melodic delineation that is distinctive and memorable.
Mitchell amply demonstrates that he has made various regions of Berne’s voluminous catalog his own. Crucial as he was to its gestation, it is equally fascinating to hear him reinterpret the Snakeoil material. Both “ÀÄŠ” and “ŒRBS” consist entirely of compositions from the Snakeoil albums on ECM, and “CLØÙDĒ” combines “Spare Parts” from the first (2012) album with a reprise of the aforementioned 6/8 section of “Thin Ice.” In these compositions, one sometimes hears Mitchell channeling his bandmates’ solos and accompaniment, allowing their spirits to be present in his music-making. However, just as often, the pianist takes things in different directions, lingering over a riff or harmony here, inventing a new countermelody there. Thus, Mitchell untethers his playing from the more circumscribed role he undertakes in Snakeoil.
Even Berne aficianados are likely to be stumped by some of the material here, including a previously unrecorded cut, “Huevos Expanded,” the basis for “SÎÏÑ,” a fetching, impressionist tinged ballad that serves as the album’s closer. Here Mitchell fashions undulating ostinatos and deftly pedaled passages to create whorls of colorful harmonies, buoyed by a gentle waft of swing. The piece serves as a reminder that, while at times the thread between them is tenuous, Berne’s work is not solely avant-garde in character; it also evinces connections to the modern jazz tradition.
As a whole, FØRAGE leaves one eager to take a two-pronged approach: first, delving further into Berne’s catalog to reevaluate his music afresh; second, to reacquaint oneself with Mitchell’s own compelling body of work. It is also exciting to learn that more things are afoot with Snakeoil. In the meantime, FØRAGE supplies a potent combination of captivating compositions and abundant musicality. Recommended.
At National Sawdust on Friday April 7th at 7 PM, Opera Cabal presents the premiere of Ken Ueno’s new opera Aeolus. Joined by vocalist Majel Connery and Flux Quartet, Ueno performs throughout the opera. His fascinating blend of vocal techniques includes microtonal inflections, megaphone-amplified directives, and throat-singing. Electronics, video projections, and an architecturally conceived set design converge to make Aeolus a potent multimedia concoction. I recently caught up with Ken as he was in the thick of preparations for the opera.
Hi Ken. Thanks for taking the time to talk with Sequenza 21.
Why are you calling this an opera instead of some other genre? As you well know, multimedia theater pieces are called all sorts of things…
Following the examples of Monteverdi, Mozart, and especially Nono, “opera” seems to be an open enough label, if we need a label, so I hope it’s appropriate for this piece. But you’re right – I don’t really know what to call it. It doesn’t have a regular narrative. It features two voices that are in distinct contrast to bel canto singing. But I am attached to the possibilities Prometeo opens up, so if Nono’s is an opera, then, Aeolus, can be an opera too, right? Aeolus does feature a suoni mobili (Nono calls the movement of sound the main drama in Prometeo) characteristic in that, in the guise of Aeolus (the ruler of the winds), I move around the hall, directing my non-semantic vocalizations with a megaphone to articulate the architecture, the space, as an instrument.
You’ve mentioned that there are autobiographical elements in the libretto. Since it is fairly nonlinear in terms of narrativity, would you like to share how some of your own history fits in?
Memory is non-linear. Spaces between texts and texts in memory become islands in search of a place in time, an ostensible home, which the idea of a Penelope represents. My biographical circumstance is that my family moved around so much during my formative years that I don’t have a normative sensation of a home. So, the idea of a home is a mythic space for me, one I’ve also begun to associate with not only a place, but also specific people with whom I shared lived in those spaces that felt like places to which I belonged. That’s also, I think, why James Joyce resonates so powerfully in me. If there is a main narrative in Aeolus, it’s the counterpoint between the semantic and non-semantic in search of a home.
If I may, here’s an excerpt of a draft I’m writing for something else, which elaborates on this:
My own language acquisition parallels Dedalus’ in that the trajectory from babbling to fluency did filter out a palette of sounds that were extraneous to language. As a baby, I remember understanding language before I could actually speak. I remember both the frustration of not being able to communicate, as well as the tiny victories when I somehow managed to reach out and get through – sometimes purely through the inflections of non-semantic vocalizations, maybe combined with clear physical gestures like pointing or shaking my head.
When I was four, my family moved to Switzerland, and apart from speaking Japanese with my family I was a mute child again, unable to speak the local French. The burgeoning richness of my internal life was frustrated by this communication setback. Around that time, I was given a portable Aiwa tape recorder and started to make non-linear musique concrète, playing with snippets of sounds of my little world in exile. Listening to those recordings now, through auto-archaeology, I discover not only that I was vocalizing non-semantically, but that I was singing multiphonics. I was babbling, testing the limits of my vocal repertoire, expanding the repertoire of sounds my body could make. Unhinged from semantic obligation, I was freely playing at making sounds for the pure sake of making sounds, developing a series of dexterous moves ancillary to spoken language – to logos. I remember how it felt. The complex vibrations of the multiphonics reverberated in my body, shaking my bones. It was soothing. I learned to make a variety of sounds that registered different feelings. They felt like different weights of the world. Not being able to speak the local language, not having any friends, I was performing, rehearsing for my future self. The future will rationalize the past. When I read James Joyce as a teenager, the tropes of alienation and exile, and the distance between language as sound and language as semantic medium, all resonated with me.
Tell us about your collaborators.
Majel Connery is my singer. Though classically trained, she has a beautiful lyrical voice, that reminds me of Elena Tonra from Daughter or Beth Gibbons of Portishead. But that’s really unfair. I should not be naming names or comparing her to anyone else – she has a great voice, she is a primary referent in her own right. When I heard her voice and imagined what it was capable of, I knew I wanted to write songs for her. Songs that would carry the semantic exposition in Aeolus. She’s been very generous with me in trying out sketches of my songs in different keys, etc., so that we can get to the right voice/word combination to get to the pathos that I want to express. Majel is also a brilliant project leader. She is Opera Cabal. She is our fearless leader and most responsible for all of this happening. A visionary!
Thomas Tsang is a brilliant architect with whom I have been collaborating for ten years. We met as fellows at the American Academy in Rome, and we’ve collaborated on installations ever since. As an artist, he brings a fully-fledged multidisciplinary edge to architecture. He questions traditional outputs and bravely creates installations, events, workshops that challenge us to rethink the history of specialization in our related fields. The full vision for the opera is to have a space that he designs that is something more than a set or venue, something more integral to the expression of the piece. We are working towards that.
Erin Johnson is a video artist with whom I have been collaborating over the last few years. She’s an all-round creative force. Many of her works thread the line between video art, installation, performance art, curation, and community engagement. She naturally problematizes categories in her artistic output. She curated a work of mine last summer – Fortress Brass, a site-specific piece that took place on boats and then at Fort Gorges in Portland Harbor, in Maine. Erin made videos for four of the scenes in Aeolus, for scenes with voice-overs. Voice-overs take the place of dialogue in Aeolus (a move that I first began to experiment with in my first opera, Gallo). Being pre-recorded, the voice-overs inhabit a different time/place: it serves a distancing function.
I am also lucky to be working with the renown Flux Quartet. Specialists in the extreme demands of new music, breathtaking in their courage and inspiring. I am blessed to have this team.
What are some of the electronic elements in the piece?
Mostly, the electronics are backing tracks for the pop songs. In one scene, I perform with a Max patch that the brilliant designer/composer Ilya Rostovtsev made for me. The patch lets me use my iPhone as a controller for algorithmic drums.
What does lateral bowing sound like? You’ve become a big fan of it … how did you first discover it as a technique?
I like lateral bowing because it sounds like breath – the link between my vocal practice, my body, and the embodied choreography of sounds that I notate for instrumentalists to perform. I first came up with lateral bowing, when I was experimenting on a viola during the composition of my viola concerto, Talus.
What’s next for you?
I’m lucky to have pieces upcoming for talented friends: a piece for five-string baroque cello for Elinor Frey; a solo trumpet + electronics work for Andy Kozar; a solo cello piece for Jason Calloway; a saxophone piece for Vincent Daoud; a trio for Kim Kashkashian; and a long overdue piece for piano for Kathy Supove (and some other things too).
(80 North 6th Street), composer and toy pianist David Smookewill celebrate the release of his New FocusCD Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Joined by album personnelloadbang, Karl Larson and Michael Parker Harley, Smooke will also perform and improvise on the toy piano. I recently caught up with him and discussed the new recording, compositional approaches, and some future plans.
Artwork: Alejandro Acierto.
What attracts you to composing for and performing on the toy piano?
The sound of the toy piano evokes an idealized childhood, the sort that no one I know actually enjoyed and yet many of us possess as a shared mental experience. I love having that association underlying my explorations of disturbing and unusual sounds. In addition, it’s relatively easy to travel with one—certainly compared to a cello—and I like that there’s a basic keyboard interface alongside all sorts of other ways to interact with the instrument. When I first started playing live, it was also a huge selling point to me that there isn’t a standard performance practice with the toy piano, so I could do what felt comfortable to me without feeling like there was going to be someone in the audience shaking their head at the way that I hold my hands or where I place my feet. I keep thinking that I’ll move on to other instruments, and have plans to build some original ones, but then I keep finding other things that I can make this little box do.
Did the macabre image of the title provide a jumping off point for the winds piece or was it incorporated latter on?
When I first discovered that the Nutshell Studies existed, before I even saw them in person, I knew that I would have to eventually use them as the title for a major toy piano piece. They are a remarkably close analogy to what I do with the toy piano in that they take something associated with childhood (dollhouses in this case) and treat them in a very adult manner. And even though they portray an extreme fascination with death, they are actual tools that are used to assist people studying forensic science, and so are not sensationalist or exploitative. So the title sets up the exact expectations that I want for the piece.
Photo: Britt Olsen-Ecker.
What microtonal tunings do you use in the wind ensemble piece? How did you manage to detune the banjo? What other tunings appear in your music?
Like you, I do enjoy lots of different temperaments! Since every toy piano is tuned differently from each other, and none of them are in anything close to equal temperament, I tried to place the toy piano within an environment where its unique scale wouldn’t sound too wrong. From the very first conceptualizations of the piece, I knew that I needed an instrument to link the toy piano to the ensemble, in this case, the banjo. Two strings of the five-string banjo are one quarter-tone sharp of their regular tuning, and in writing the part I was very specific as to which notes were played on which strings. And so we I created a continuum from the aleatoric tuning of the toy instrument, through the professional instrument with folk associations tuned in order to make it sound somewhat distorted, into the more standard concert instruments. In that piece, concert instruments use quarter tones as well. Some Details of Hell also uses a lot of quarter tones, in that case in order to explore resonance off of a single low pitch. In A Baby Bigger Than Up Was, I compose out the vowel formants from the repeated text, which required a more systematic approach to mictrotones, using naturally-tuned thirds and sevenths in addition to quarter tones.
Your text-setting often takes a deconstructionist or fragmentary approach. Tell us a little about how you view writing for the voice and texted scores in general.
I love words and writing! I love them so much that sometimes I can feel hamstrung when I try to set a text. And I think that the human voice remains the absolutely most beautiful and expressive instrument that we have yet created. So, for several years I avoided text entirely while writing for voice. Some Details of Hell is the last piece in which I took a published poem that I love and tried to set it as clearly as possible. In that case, I spent months analyzing the poem, including its line breaks, and figuring out exactly how I could do justice to Brock-Broido’s incredible sensitivity to language. A Baby Bigger Grows Than Up Was is my most recent work for voice, and marks my return to the idea of text setting. But the text for that piece is unique in that it’s a story with all of the hallmarks of a narrative but published in alphabetical order, beginning with 19 iterations of the word “a” and ending with nearly an entire page of punctuation. So, every word is set exactly as it was published, but the text itself is organized in a non-narrative manner. The excerpt on the CD brings us from “a” to “breathing” in five minutes, but the entire piece is nearly an hour long—it all gets pretty intense when we reach the ms and the 72 statements of the word “mom” and 442 of the word “my”!
The idea of looping appears in two different guises on the album: down.stream where you use a loop pedal on your toy piano and the overdubbed bassoons on 21 Miles to Coolville (bonus points for that title, by the way). Obviously, your music eschews a conventional approach to minimalism. But irregular sorts of repetitions prove to be a throughline, from your vocal settings to the aforementioned looping structures. How do you deal with repetition in your compositional language?
We never experience true repetition. Each time an event is encountered, we perceive it within a context, and any previous contact with that idea or similar ones colors the new experience. I’m fascinated by that idea and also by nature, where near repetition is quite common, but true repetition is almost unimaginable. I think a great deal about listening to the interaction between various bird calls, or predicting ocean waves, or watching rivers where the water is forever changing and forever the same. In my music, I try to play with these concepts by having ideas or words or motives recur but generally subtly changed. 21 Miles to Coolville (and thanks!) is completely written out, and has been played by four bassoons and also by Michael Parker Harley as a solo with prerecorded Harleys. The only difference in how I created to that piece from any previous compositions is that the quarter note pulse remains constant throughout. And my approach to looping pedal in my solo performances is a bit different from most people in that I generally am using it to create drones and sustained sounds, which are otherwise incredibly difficult to produce on the toy piano, and to allow for the buildup of more orchestral textures. When I was in high school, the music of the minimalist composers was one of my first entries into the classical music world, and I still adore minimalist and post-minimalist music and art. So, I feel the influence of that aesthetic very strongly, and try to be patient in my own music, allowing ideas to remain in place for as long as necessary, and I do sometimes enjoy unadulterated recurrence.
Tell us about the gig! How did you come together with National Sawdust to present a portrait concert? Who is playing and what will be on the bill?
With the new CD, I wanted to launch in New York, where so many of the performers live, as well as in my home of Baltimore. I’ve been hearing so many amazing things about National Sawdust, and I was fortunate enough to have them agree to host this concert. We’ll be presenting four of the six tracks from the CD, all performed by the players on the album: loadbang, the pianist Karl Larson, the bassoonist Michael Parker Harley, and myself. In addition, loadbang and I will improvise together to close out the show. I’m very excited to have this opportunity to share the stage with such amazing people and players!
What’s next for David Smooke? What projects are in the pipeline?
I’m going to be playing live quite a bit more than usual over the coming months, with shows in Boston on the Opensound Series on February 11 and in San Francisco at the Center for New Music on February 24, among others. And I’m working on a piece for the Baltimore-based Sonar Ensemble right now that uses a recording of a run on a nature trail near my home as the ground layer over which the ensemble will perform.
